AE's Journal Round 5 - Finding Freedom To

Where are you and where are you going?
Scott 2
Posts: 2825
Joined: Sun Feb 12, 2012 10:34 pm

Re: AE's Journal Round 5 - Finding Freedom To

Post by Scott 2 »

Community is a problem for me as well, especially with Covid providing reason to social distance. Like I need another excuse.

Work didn't leave enough time for non-work friends, but since I was remote, sustaining them upon retirement hasn't made sense. Looking at people on Zoom isn't the foundation for lasting relationships, IMO. I think remote work was best for my personality, but it definitely left a hole.

In person classes through the community center are a good idea. I am interested to see how your plan goes.

AnalyticalEngine
Posts: 949
Joined: Sun Sep 02, 2018 11:57 am

Re: AE's Journal Round 5 - Finding Freedom To

Post by AnalyticalEngine »

@Western Red Cedar - I just looked into the term lower companions, and it describes this friend group to a T. It's where you end up in a group of friends who all have the same problem as you, but because you're together, you overlook the problem and normalize the behavior. It's only when you step back from that group of people that you realize how unhealthy it was and how you were just enabling everyone's problems. Groupthink does normalize behavior, and it's remarkable how this happens without you even realizing it's happened.

@Scott 2 - I'm finding the same problem with remote work. I've made friends at work before, but the vast majority of my coworkers were simply people I tolerated. Nevertheless, I've realized I depended on company lunches and happy hours for my entire social life, which is now a significant problem in my social life.

Agreed on the Zoom thing too. I'm trying to get to know my new coworkers, but Zoom is so joyless that I'm about to give up. Even without Zoom, coworker friends tend to be pretty transient. I tend to lose touch with them pretty quickly when I change jobs.

AnalyticalEngine
Posts: 949
Joined: Sun Sep 02, 2018 11:57 am

Re: AE's Journal Round 5 - Finding Freedom To

Post by AnalyticalEngine »

On The Difficulty of Making Friends in Your 30s
For background, I'm almost 32 and single. I like this lifestyle. I have no desire to change it. But navigating the social world in your 30s is a lot harder than your 20s. People in their 30s tend to be in the full swing of adulthood and have disappeared into the bonds of matrimony with kids on the way. They're working 50-60 hour weeks. What they are not doing is hanging out at random social clubs.

Strength training at the gym
I signed up for a strength training class at the community center. Actually, this class was very useful. My fitness level is roughly slug, and I've learned a lot about proper technique. This class is the beginner strength training class, and I plan to take the intermediate class when it's over. What I haven't done is made any friends here. Everyone else is 10 years older than me and a stay-at-home mom. They're nice people. I wish them the best. We're all weight lifting slugs. But I feel like a chronic outsider due to my age and single-status. There's a gap that I'm having trouble bridging, and I don't feel like I fit in here.

Community center oil painting
I sign up for an oil painting class. The instructor gets sick and has to move it back a week. Then they find a substitute. The substitute is not very good at teaching. I can't hear what she's saying behind the mask. Also, who thought you can learn to paint with cold wax in two hours? Oils take a long time to dry between coats. My painting smears together into pure green. The other people in the class are two girls in early high school and two more stay-at-home moms. I'm noticing a pattern about who goes to community center classes. No one talks to each other.

Book club
There's a book club at my local library. I call and ask if I can come. They say yes. Great, a book club might be a situation where I'm actually talking to people instead of everyone doing their own activity in silence.

The book club gets canceled due to COVID-19.

Downtown Denver
What I need to do is find younger people. Where are the younger people? They're in downtown Denver, of course. I haven't really been in Denver since 2017. In the meantime, the city decided to turn into California. I pass a homeless tent and scooter fire on my way to the restaurant. Several people are watching it burn. I watch it for a moment. Then the fire department puts it out. Smoke has stained the retaining wall by the freeway. It smells like weed. The car repair shop has been decorated with graffiti. What does the graffiti say? Who knows. Legibility is not the prime concern here.

I finally get to the "nice" part of town. I realize "nice" means rich millennial. There's a bunch of fancy apartment buildings with the same brand names I saw in Austin. I bet they cost $3k a month for a two bedroom too. The people in the apartments want me to know they think black lives matter. I don't see a single black person. I don't see a single person who isn't white. I'm white. There's a lot of very nice restaurants and bars. There are some tech office buildings. WeWork and Union Station are down the street.

The restaurant is nice. The drinks cost $15, but happy hour gives me $2 off and money has lost all meaning to me. There is no meaningful difference between $1.50, $15, and $150 because I make $150k a year. I order the burger. It's pretty good. The bun tastes like pretzel dough. Everyone here is from out of state and dressed like how they think Colorado dresses, which is apparently flannel and beanie caps. Actually, they're not wrong. That's how I'm dressed, I realized. When did Denver become a brand? When did the entirety of being rich and single become hanging out in simulacra California?

How to make friends in your 30s?
I've relied on work and school to give me free friends my entire life. Working from home means making friends is a lot harder. I knew that going into this, and I did it intentionally because overcoming my isolationist tendencies is important to EREing successfully.

But when you're not "average" in many areas of your life (age, single, no kids, ERE-type hobbies, hobbies that are "wrong" for your sex, etc), and you're not relying on free work friends, finding people you relate to is much harder. I've realized that I normally just mask a lot (aka lie) to overcome this, but masking all the time trained me to hate being with other people because everything felt like a chore or a performance. Trying to unmask and find people I relate is challenging.

I'm going to try the book club. I'm also going to try things further from where I live, even if that involves a lot more driving to get there.

Western Red Cedar
Posts: 1205
Joined: Tue Sep 01, 2020 2:15 pm

Re: AE's Journal Round 5 - Finding Freedom To

Post by Western Red Cedar »

AnalyticalEngine wrote:
Sat Jan 29, 2022 10:53 am
How to make friends in your 30s?
I've noticed an interesting pattern for my wife as she made new friends in her late 20's and early 30's. She is a heavy introvert. She started attending dance classes or other events she is interested in, and now has a pretty broad group of acquaintances and friends who are much older than her. She really doesn't care about age at all. Her friends from ballet are 20-30 years older than her. She's also fine hanging out with people that are 5-10 years younger than her. You may have more success if you let go of some of the labels or filters (i.e. SAHM) and just focus on connecting with like-minded people.

If you are in Denver, you might think about hooking up with the MMM co-working space or some of the events they host in Longmont. It sounds like there are loads of people in the FI sphere in Colorado. Most of them seem pretty cool from the events I've seen online.

AnalyticalEngine
Posts: 949
Joined: Sun Sep 02, 2018 11:57 am

Re: AE's Journal Round 5 - Finding Freedom To

Post by AnalyticalEngine »

I do agree that being open to people outside my demographic is a good idea. I think the real key here is seeing people regularly. It's hard to get to know people outside of a filter when you only meet them once, but repeated interactions with the same people in the same setting will usually let you get to know their more complex traits. Maybe I just need to be persistent with the classes.

Good point on the MMM co-working space. I'll look into that. When I checked a few years ago, there was an unofficial MMM offshoot in Denver on meetup. Maybe they're still there. I'll check meetup again.

Bonde
Posts: 70
Joined: Mon May 31, 2021 5:21 am

Re: AE's Journal Round 5 - Finding Freedom To

Post by Bonde »

Interesting journal. I think your thoughts about escapism and FI are right for some, don't know how many. But it is a good excuse not to be social. I also think it is important to look for the right balance of spending and socialization. Not all norms have to be followed, some have to be challenged. I think that there are some interacting dimensions to optimise. I have had some success by combining communal gardening, exercise and social activities. The investment was minor and the output of vegetables and new acquaintances made up for it, I think without having any proof because I don't know how to measure most of the output.

Concerning friendship I think that you are doing a great effort and if you keep it up, I am sure that you will get new friends. Remember that we are living in strange times and hopefully the world turns normal this year.
Have you tried joining local facebook groups? E.g. for hiking or other activities/interests? Since we moved to a new area I have joined many local groups online and found lots of interesting activities. I have seen others getting good reactions from strangers when posting.

bostonimproper
Posts: 581
Joined: Sun Jul 01, 2018 11:45 am

Re: AE's Journal Round 5 - Finding Freedom To

Post by bostonimproper »

Re: finding young people, these are cliche millennial things I assume are in Denver, but have you tried looking into:
- nearby climbing gym
- community (outdoor) sports league
- craft beer place (ideally one with trivia/event nights)

You can also try dating someone and stealing their friends. Half my friends in the area are from my husband, who grew up / went to college here.

Earlybath
Posts: 43
Joined: Thu Sep 22, 2016 8:43 am

Re: AE's Journal Round 5 - Finding Freedom To

Post by Earlybath »

Also perhaps consider a different perspective ?
we are operating with a notion of intimacy that is far less common than we torture ourselves by imagining
https://www.theschooloflife.com/thebook ... -of-depth/

AnalyticalEngine
Posts: 949
Joined: Sun Sep 02, 2018 11:57 am

Re: AE's Journal Round 5 - Finding Freedom To

Post by AnalyticalEngine »

January Review
Engagement requires active goal setting. I've been using a mix of GTD and my own system for this. It's basically weekly/monthly planning/reviews combined with a daily checklist. At the end of the day, I review what I did and write the highlights in my calendar.

I cannot understate how life changing this has been, even though I've only been doing it for a month. It has brought so much awareness into the current state of my life, my habits, what exactly it is I want to do in the future, and what I need to do to get there. Large goals must be broken into smaller, daily actions, and daily reflection ensures you are making steady changes.

Working from home is a challenge because you miss out on all the structure and socialization that work brought you. Learning to implement your own structure is a critical skill, not only for FI, but for living an engaging life.

Spending and Finances
I fell out of the habit of tracking money through the pandemic, but I picked it up again in January. Unsurprisingly, I started to spend way more money when I wasn't paying attention. I've fallen into the salaryman trap of making so much money at work, and having so much saved, that it's really hard to care about spending $10 on a decaf latte and breakfast burrito every morning. The money means so little to you. It just exists, like some endless ocean in your bank account, that these purchases no longer have meaning.

Losing the motivating power of money is a big problem when your entire motivation in life was money. You're left adrift, with no real reason to cut spending or negotiate your salary or do anything except spend $10 on a decaf latte and breakfast burrito. And what's the point of that? The latte doesn't even have caffeine.

But the reality is, spending is a proxy for other things. Spending money to solve problems robs you of learning skills. To learn skills and solve problems is to be engaged. Spending money robs you of engagement. In the famous words of DeBord's Society of the Spectacle, "The more you consume, the less you life."

So it's time to cut back on spending. The goal here isn't really to save money but to solve problems in ways other than money. Non-monetary solutions force creativity and engagement. It forces you to develop a deeper awareness of yourself and the way the world works. It forces you to align yourself to reality and not a consumer fantasy, and meaningful engagement with reality is critical in grounding yourself and for mental health.

Art and writing
I wrote 43k words in January, which is a ton, actually. That's nearly the 50k-NaNoWriMo-level. I might try to cut back on quantity here and focus on quality. The stuff I'm writing is largely for practice and isn't suited to general audiences. I'm now to the point where I should write a real novel for real people to read if I want to push my skills further.

I started Proko's online figure drawing class. It's pretty intimidating and the material is fairly challenging, but I made it about 20% of the way through this month. Deliberate practice has helped my drawing skills immensely.

The oil painting class at the community center was a bit disappointing, so I've decided to take the initiative here and organize my own painting classes. I've found some people who want to do one of those "wine and paint" things, and I'm going to host it at my house. "Wine and paint" is hardly fine art, but I'm going to be leading the session, which will make me practice before. I'll pick up some new skills trying to paint the demo painting before I lead it, and this might be an avenue to finding some new friends if I list doing this on meetup.

Fitness
I'm going to the gym about 2-3 times a week, and I'm starting to enjoy fitness a lot more. Weightlifting is a surprisingly good activity for making you more aware of your body. Intentionally targeting each muscle group then watching yourself in the mirror to make sure you do the motion correctly has developed great kinetic awareness.

I can run a full 5k now in one setting. I'm going to target three days of cardio now, two of which train speed, and the third one to train distance.

On Reinventing Yourself
Increasingly, I'm finding my old hobbies, identities, relationships, career, where I live, etc, are all in need of being reinvented. I'm reaching to the point where the things I was are not things I want to be. Change has always required the death of the old, but less talked about is the period between the old and the new. I find myself in a transition period now where who I was is no longer who I am, but who I will be remains unseen.

It's hard to find role models or examples of people that are in similar positions to me. I'm in uncharted territory, and reinventing myself requires breaking away from a lot of molds, including ones commonly seen in the FIRE community. It's a little disorienting.

February Goals
[] Cook at home more and only go out to eat socially
[] Strength train 2x/week, cardio 2x-3x/week
[] Schedule primary care and eye doctor visits
[] Clean out closet and buy new jeans
[] Delete all distracting apps off phone and avoid the internet while at work
[] Be more engaged at work
[] Track spending
[] Go to book club, one other meetup, and invite friends over for dinner at least once
[] Clean basement for potential roommate and sell stuff on ebay
[] Continue Proko's figure drawing class
[] Develop new idea for novel
[] Read Getting Things Done and implement the method

AnalyticalEngine
Posts: 949
Joined: Sun Sep 02, 2018 11:57 am

Re: AE's Journal Round 5 - Finding Freedom To

Post by AnalyticalEngine »

@Bonde - It's funny you mention Facebook. I remember deleting my old Facebook account back in 2013. That's hilarious and quaint now, really. Smartphones and social media have taken over the world to the point that merely not having a Facebook account is basically nothing.

I'm going to remake my Facebook for Marketplace and the meetup groups there. I might add close friends for the sake of keeping up with people who have moved, but definitely not going to add people I've fallen out of contact with or distant relatives this time lol.

@bostonimproper - A sports league is a good idea. I know the community center is organizing a soccer league, so I'll look into that.

@Earlybath - I'm reminded of Aristotle's three types of friends: friends of pleasure, friends of business, and friends of virtue. You definitely don't want to mistake pleasure friends for virtue friends, but all three types have their uses in different situations. I actually need more pleasure friends, now that I think about it. That's the friend type I'm primarily looking for in hobby groups.

User avatar
mountainFrugal
Posts: 1125
Joined: Fri May 07, 2021 2:26 pm

Re: AE's Journal Round 5 - Finding Freedom To

Post by mountainFrugal »

AnalyticalEngine wrote:
Wed Feb 02, 2022 12:44 pm

Art and writing
I wrote 43k words in January, ....
I started Proko's online figure drawing class. It's pretty intimidating and the material is fairly challenging, but I made it about 20% of the way through this month. Deliberate practice has helped my drawing skills immensely.

The oil painting class at the community center was a bit disappointing, so I've decided to take the initiative here and organize my own painting classes.

I can run a full 5k now in one setting. I'm going to target three days of cardio now, two of which train speed, and the third one to train distance.
Boom! Great progress on all these fronts! (and the ones not quoted). Interested in a Proko accountability buddy? His courses are hard because he is so damn good and was trained in a classic atelier. I have been grazing his figure drawing and anatomy courses the past 3 years as part of the DIYart school, but have never fully committed to see one through. It is on my yearly goals though... ;).

AnalyticalEngine
Posts: 949
Joined: Sun Sep 02, 2018 11:57 am

Re: AE's Journal Round 5 - Finding Freedom To

Post by AnalyticalEngine »

Proko accountability buddy would be great! His stuff is so challenging that I need all the motivation I can get lol. Let me know how you'd like to do it, and I'd be happy to team up.

User avatar
mountainFrugal
Posts: 1125
Joined: Fri May 07, 2021 2:26 pm

Re: AE's Journal Round 5 - Finding Freedom To

Post by mountainFrugal »

I will DM to figure out the details. Looking forward!

AnalyticalEngine
Posts: 949
Joined: Sun Sep 02, 2018 11:57 am

Re: AE's Journal Round 5 - Finding Freedom To

Post by AnalyticalEngine »

Building a Social Life, part 2

I attended two, new meetups this month: one was happy hour at the MMM HQ in Longmont and the other was a DnD group.

I got to meet a lot of like minded people at the MMM HQ happy hour, including Pete himself, so that gave me hope that I've just been in the wrong groups my entire life. The MMM HQ itself was also pretty cool. They had plenty of seating, a kitchen, a fridge of beer, and a shelf of swap books. The HQ comes with a Discord group where people often give away spare items and swap tools.

The major problem, however, is that Longmont is about an hour's drive one-way (an hour and a half through heavy traffic) from my house, so I'm probably not going to be able to go much unless I either move or commit to driving a lot. Indeed, this was a major problem with a lot of the meetup groups. Denver traffic is a form of cruel and unusual punishment, and most of the meetup groups are in Denver. This means I need to drive forever through heavy traffic to do anything. Right now, I've resigned myself to driving, but it has made me realize that where I live sucks.

I live in a bedroom community south of Denver full of families and commuters, and so there's just not much to do here. Long term, I'm probably going to move out of here, but that comes with a lot of open questions I need to sort through first. What will I do with my condo? Sell or rent? Where do I want to live? Do I want to stay in Colorado or move to another state? Do I want to live in an urban, suburban, or rural area? These are all open questions I need to spend more time answering.

My understanding of the web-of-goals concept has grown a lot from the experience. All my life, I've relied on school or work to give me free socialization, and I never put active effort into networking or maintaining my social connections. Now that I work from home, I suddenly realize that maintaining social capital requires a lot of active effort to meet new people, exchange contact information, invite people over, remember birthdays, etc. And putting in this effort is much harder if you haven't designed your life with this in mind (live in the wrong town, work from home, etc are all 'negative flows' for socialization).

Other skills also help with relationships. Having your house clean and tidy, plus knowing how to cook, makes it easier to host people. Having practical skills makes networking easier because you can swap favors instead of hiring contractors. People will naturally like you more if you have more positive things to bring to a relationship.

I've been so bad at networking my entire life that trying to correct all of this now is a little overwhelming. Still, it's better late than never to realize these things.

7Wannabe5
Posts: 9372
Joined: Fri Oct 18, 2013 9:03 am

Re: AE's Journal Round 5 - Finding Freedom To

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

Having a social life can be a bit of work and expense. I have recently realized that I was often relying on more extroverted partners to make me do things and cover the cost. So, I had to add Social Outing to my Weekly Checklist.

User avatar
Slevin
Posts: 626
Joined: Tue Sep 01, 2015 7:44 pm
Location: Sonoma County

Re: AE's Journal Round 5 - Finding Freedom To

Post by Slevin »

Agree that getting a social life can be a daunting task, especially starting from a smaller level. Also, depending on your MTBI type (or personality type or whatever), some of these skills may come less natural to you due to how you process things. If you are INTJ or INTP (which is pretty likely seeing your username, career choice, and being on this forum), you probably will be one of those people who isn't "naturally social" and due to lack of a similar processing to some of the more outgoing personality types, you will probably end up with a smaller overall social circle (at least without a lot of constant effort). You probably won't be this guy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WBqdtmI ... tenDirksen

Having gone through a large scale similar attempt earlier in life, (basically when i dropped off this forum after a bad breakup with a long term GF, let's say 2016ish) here's what I would do again to try and restart a friend group (may or not apply to your situation):

* kinda accept I'm not a thriving socialite like some of my peers, I will function better with small peer friend groups
* pick up a social hobby with rotations of people (waaaay harder with covid. Bouldering was my primary back in the day, then group gym classes. Be friendly, but not creepy.)
* play more disc golf (personal to me but you live in CO too so I know you have tons of good courses around). Generally chill people who like to hang out and play disc golf (i.e. outdoor excuse to drink beers and smoke weed with friends), and there are plenty of weekly clubs (competitive or more social) that you can show up to and build a rep with them.
* after said social hobbies, invite people to grab a beer somewhere nearby + walkable (yes this costs money, but not that much, provided you just grab a cheap beer)
* engage more people randomly throughout life (while waiting at the grocery store in a long line, whatevs) (also again worse during covid times when people wear masks), some people will respond well, some will be rude. Its just a way to practice bland conversations.
* see if you can tag onto and bond with some of the way more socially extroverted people. I'm never gonna be the guy planning parties and events 1x / week but I can sure be friends with them and hopefully get invited to them.
* pen in times on the daily planner or whatever to text people or whatever some random nonsense just to keep up with them. This will help grow bonds.
*Also, use human psychology constants to build friendships (ask people for small favors, etc) . There's plenty of books out there on this. It seemed weird or slightly unethical to me at first, until I framed it as just having a mental framework (how I operate) to do what other humans might have inbuilt intuitively.

Tl;dr: Take it sprint by sprint as it is a complex task (many unknown actors), so you have to just jump in, try some stuff, iterate, continue on. Friendships grow slowly with repeated contact, and friends have friends, so you probably just need to aim for small results that can then grow exponentially due to the network effect.

Locally, there are a bunch of swing dance / other dance classes that take place once a week in Denver. They are usually cheap-ish, $10 a night for lessons and the dancing or something. If you show up, you can spend time socializing and learning a skill, which then can lead to more friends, and most of them take place at bars already, so when you finish up you are already in a place that is convivial for continued socializing. Try to capitalize on things like that, which are cheap, worst case you can head out, close to home.

Also, if you are in Lakewood / Littleton / Englewood, yeah, there's not enough humans outside or even hanging out at bars to end up with a good way to socialize or connect with people, you probably should move to somewhere with more stuff to do while you are on this journey. You need the optionality of doing things without heavy friction costs or else even going to a low cost event can be too much effort to be worth it.

AnalyticalEngine
Posts: 949
Joined: Sun Sep 02, 2018 11:57 am

Re: AE's Journal Round 5 - Finding Freedom To

Post by AnalyticalEngine »

@7Wannabe5 - I've fallen into the same trap a lot of my life--letting my extroverted friends plan everything while I just drifted around passively. It became a real problem for me because I lost the ability to distinguish what I wanted out of people or activities and instead just expected others to drag me around and entertain me. Undoing it has forced me to be proactive, which has lead to a lot of personal growth for me. Having a social outing on the weekly checklist is a good idea to avoid falling into that trap.

@Slevin - That's all great advice, thank you. I'll apply some of these things and check out disk golf. I know there's a giant part of disk golf near me, so that makes it easy.

What type of small favors do you ask from people? This is one area I really struggle in because I have a hard time asking for help, so I'm trying to unlearn that habit one small step at a time.

I live in a worse area than even Littleton, which is Douglas County. I moved here originally for work back in 2015, but I have no real reason to stay here any more except some family in the area and the fact I bought a condo. The condo is a big problem because the housing market exploded so much since I bought it, so I'm effectively trapped here now because buying another house in the Denver area is nigh impossible.

Still, I ask myself, "if I had $400k, would I decide to live in Douglas County and buy the condo again?" Probably not! Which is a sign I should move.

shaz
Posts: 420
Joined: Mon Aug 02, 2021 7:05 pm
Location: Colorado, US

Re: AE's Journal Round 5 - Finding Freedom To

Post by shaz »

There are a lot of very nice Open Space areas in Douglas County. Also there are a number of bike trails. The area around Parker is one of the best for finding petrified wood if you want to give that a try. Maybe you could try out a hiking or cycling group. The trails are generally very well maintained so I expect there are trail maintenance groups that would welcome any help.

AnalyticalEngine
Posts: 949
Joined: Sun Sep 02, 2018 11:57 am

Re: AE's Journal Round 5 - Finding Freedom To

Post by AnalyticalEngine »

@shaz - Thanks for the suggestions. I took the dog on a walk through Cherry Creek Trail today, so that was a nice difference. I had no idea there was petrified wood here too, so I'll look into that.

shaz
Posts: 420
Joined: Mon Aug 02, 2021 7:05 pm
Location: Colorado, US

Re: AE's Journal Round 5 - Finding Freedom To

Post by shaz »

That's a good idea about walking your dog on Cherry Creek Trail. You may know this already, but the trail goes all the way from Franktown to downtown Denver. I skated the whole thing when it was much shorter and I was much younger. It could be fun to make a goal of walking the whole thing a section at a time. It goes through some interesting areas that you might not discover otherwise. There is a dog park at Bayou Gulch south of Parker with a trail that connects to the Cherry Creek Trail.

Post Reply